


Sit Down Young Stranger

by jilly-chan (slightlyjillian)



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-05
Updated: 2010-03-05
Packaged: 2017-10-07 17:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlyjillian/pseuds/jilly-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. The life of common soldiers. Lt. Walker and Lt. Nichol serve together forming an unlikely and lasting bond of friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sit Down Young Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> written in 2002.
> 
> Original A/N: borrowed a few of the underused characters from Gundam Wing for this tale. Walker and Nichol are both very intriguing characters to me and need more fics about them. The title and marked song lyrics are from Gordon Lightfoot's song.
> 
> Any similarities to actual wars are unintentionally and I meant to leave some details vague to focus on the characters.

It was the best chair that either of them had seen in weeks. The right, front foot sported a significant chip however, so that when one sat in it, the entire seat tipped forward. Nevertheless, it had all four legs necessary to let one sit in it comfortably enough.

Putting the lantern in the center of the square table, Philip Walker brushed away the dust and dirt that had fallen down from the ceiling during one of many bombings in that part of the country. He could still hear the echo of engines reverberating between his ears. Recollections of hundreds of shells heard whistling as they fell. Now that the attacks had stopped, the silence was almost more disturbing than the vague, impersonal danger of those noises.

The echoes he continued to hear were almost more comforting that the otherwise cricket-less silence.

"Let me know when you're done, Nichol." He said softly, not to disturb his companion.

His politeness was lost on Walker's brooding, dark-browed companion. As far as anyone could tell, Nikolai Veslovsky only found what constituted an insane happiness while driving the company jeep at breakneck speeds back and forth along the dangerous end of their battlefields during which he would laugh - howling like a berserker. Walker had long since given up the fear that he might break his neck during such a ride before the enemy had an opportunity to end his life with a well-placed bullet. Nichol drove much too quickly for anything but a reckless, suicidal death - a swift death, to say the least. Walker preferred his motorcycle regardless.

Walker shook his head at the contrast of seeing his comrade's burly shoulders sloped over an opened envelope, left hand poised with a pen over paper intent to draft a reply. The behavior was all so still by comparison to Nichol's afternoon's drive.

They were sharing a room in the house their unit had established as a temporary base on the way to the main company. Most of the rooms had already been looted by enemy soldiers or passing refugees. Nichol had made no small point of a smashed grandfather clock in the front hallway whose hands stood permanently fixed on the exact and accurate time of their arrival into the building.

"Here, time stops," Nichol had laughed, which was more than a little unsettling for the others to hear him start. "Kick back and enjoy the break, boys." Then Nichol had trotted up the stairs to find the chair and the table.

For some reason, the electricity refused to work for the upstairs rooms. The string dangled uselessly from the naked bulb centered over the table.

The lantern cast Nichol's shadow against the wall, emphasizing his squared jaw and wayward locks of curls that had shamelessly grown faster than they could find barbers to sheer them. For once, his hair looked properly black-brown. Most days, Nichol's hair was as light as the sandy dust that powdered it thoroughly after yet another of his frantically paced excursions in the jeep transporting goods between units.

When Nichol finished, Walker could take his turn to write to Cathy. He fell back on the temporary cot and laced his fingers over his chest. The inside pocket held his sweetheart's latest letter waiting to be opened and read.

In the relative quiet, only scattered by the echoes of missiles bouncing between Walker's ears and the scratches of Nichol's pen, both men were too willingly enchanted by the flimsy memories of their estranged homes now that the war's end was near.

_*** sit down young stranger  
*** and tell us who you are_

Unlike Walker, Nichol had no significant woman in his past to recount his daily happenstances. He knew Walker's letters recreated the life of a dutiful soldier carefully edited with poetic twists and romanticized encounters with the enemy--the enemy who probably spent its own evenings writing sweet nothings to their own women.

He found the army life all quite irritating and spent his time at the table writing an opinion on warfare worthy of an editorial column then addressing it to his older and much despised stepbrother who was an editor for a home country newspaper. Nichol hoping to eventually get (and never received) a clipping as evidence that Nichol's perspective had been presented to the public. Instead, Treize would daintily type and fold a polished retort on stationary that Nichol would stew over for days before responding to, arguing with. The ongoing quarrel of correspondences between them kept Nichol alive and alert so that no matter how heedlessly he accelerated, his responses were hair-trigger and toned to manage the conflict of rough terrain.

Snorting, Nichol found himself pushing the ink so roughly into the paper that it threatened to tear the words into the sheet rather than simply imprinting them there.

"Now he's trying to suggest that civilized societies engage in duels," Nichol growled under his breath. Walker still managed to hear every clipped word. "He won't accept that war is a filthy impersonal conflict between two desperate and violent troops bent on meaningless slaughter."

"I don't know if I'd call in meaningless," Walker protested weakly, having grown to know better than to outright contradict Nichol when he was constructing his argument.

"Of course, he's the one brandishing that silly sword of his with a golden tassel and red ribbon wrapped around the silver coated hilt," continued Nichol without listening. A self-righteous characteristic that both he and his stepbrother shared which foddered the dispute between them indefinitely. "The thing's a _wall decoration_."

Walker rubbed at his eyebrows. As his metal greased fingertips crossed his forehead, he felt the indention of his favorite goggles. They were a relatively unscratched pair with leather straps that still fit snuggly enough so his face burned to show the lines where the sun had not reached his skin. Somewhere in the past eight months of this campaign, he had gotten used to living in an un-bathed state. However, in that shell of a home, he pondered the unlikely luxury of a well-heated shower.

He wondered where the family had gone; although, from the look of the village, the evacuation had taken place well before the invasion. Not even a family photo or decoration remained besides the broken clock. In addition, while being a peculiar prize to suit their writing habits, the chair was quite quaint.

The evening shadows were full dark when Nichol rested his pen. "I'm finished." Then he added with venom while folding creases into the paper with more force than necessary, "The bastard."

If only Nichol did not constantly seek his brother's approval, Walker thought. But, if not for that, then Nichol would have no one to write to in the few hours between duty and sleep.

In a matter of seconds, the two men had switched places. Nichol, expelling a huff of air, tossed his letter to the foot of the bed and crossed his ankles. Walker curled one foot back to wrap around the broken leg in an attempt to balance the seat as he restlessly etched the greeting to his letter.

Then for a full five minutes, Philip Walker was not certain how to continue, how to tell her what had happened that day. No poetic flourish seemed sufficient to disguise it. Or his suspicions.

He could not keep his hand from shaking as his calloused fingertips pressed into the pen, making the flesh under his worn down nails to turn purple then white.

_*** sit down young stranger  
*** and tell us where you been_

Earlier writing Catherine had been far from his thoughts, as much as he might eloquently insist that she was never absent from them. He had taken his motorcycle ahead of the others, in the ease of the armistice he had jokingly offered to take _point_ and watch for any retaliation or spiteful ambush. Honestly, he needed relief from Nichol's crude and determined scowl for even a little while. Breaking free from his comrades, he could also pretend that he was simply at home riding only to enjoy the noonday warmth. Even though he knew more truly that he would never ride a motorcycle with the same carefree innocence he had before.

The path that they were traveling was little more than two dirt tracks with shallow brown grass between them. The road was spaced and worn as if countless troops had passed over them, and before that, the country folk, traveling between local farms in times of peace.

The wind picked up Walker's hair that had loosened from under his cap, letting it wave against the front of his goggles. He shook his head to cease the distraction and in doing so spotted a man standing about twenty yards away from the road-path. Dressed in a blue pair of overalls with a sweat colored shirt underneath, the man stared at Walker. A floppy hat broke the sunlight and shadowed his face.

Walker cut back the engine and let it idle as he balanced on his feet to stare back at the man. He wondered what a commoner would be doing at the edge of a ravaged field. Unbroken, crisp dirt and the stiff remains of last year's crop all left untended.

"Hello there," Walker called out, shading his eyes but unable to see the man more clearly. After a ridiculous amount of time spent mutually staring, Philip Walker tapped into his reserve of patience in order to unwind his initial displeasure and rode forward. He could only assume the man was disinterested or vaguely hostile to the remaining presence of the outside army. No one else was visible in the area, so the strange observer was alone. Walker filed the incident away and continued to enjoy his solitude.

Not much more than ten minutes later, Walker glanced to the side of his journeying forward to see an identically dressed man standing in the sloping sea of drying field grass. The pants were held up by two buckled straps and the shirt hardly distinguishable from the color of the man's labor-browned flesh.

Walker stopped again, unable to resist.

"Hello," he had called, loudly and a bit more high-pitched than he intended to carry over the steady rattle of the machine under him. Rationally, it could not be the same man as before, but the resemblance was uncanny. Walker waited, hesitantly adjusting his goggles but leaving them fixed where they were balanced above his nose.

He reconsidered before calling out again. Glancing behind, he'd long outdistanced the rest of his company. Practically, he knew he should have gone back to them then and mentioned the silent observers. However, in each probable explanation the reason for returning to the others sounded increasingly ridiculous. He could just imagine the twitch of Nichol's left eyebrow, the utmost sign of Nichol's response to something funny and, likewise, ludicrous.

As he continued forward, Walker fought the urge to turn and watch over his shoulder to make sure the stranger did not simply melt away. When he did turn, the glare of the sun made distinguishing anything specific in that field impossible.

As all the unkempt crops slid into wild fields of grass, Walker found the village. The first buildings were piles of lumber - mostly charred, stone and only a few beams suggested the framework of a wall or a collapsed ceiling.

He followed the main street that had turned into a cobbled alley through the center sections of the country town. The abandoned shops were dark and only one unbroken store window reflected back his image and the brilliance of the sun's light. He circled back after reaching the church that was the last recognizable building at the other end of the grey-black and yellow colored community. Overall, it seemed a place of markets and stores for the families that lived in the surrounding farms and thus had been thoroughly abandoned.

After coming from the opposite angle, Walker saw him. Standing just behind the sole unbroken glass he'd noticed along the row of the main street buildings. Chin tilted up, but eyes hidden by the same broad rimmed hat. The tension began just behind Walker's ears and fixed in his jaw to his throat, cutting off his breath as surely as if someone had clasped their hands there.

_Hell,_ he though, unable to whisper the words at that moment. It was the same man.

Following his delayed instinct, Walker accelerated all the way back to his company. He had never been so happy to see Nichol before or hear his wartime buddy's unsavory humor.

In the end, he managed not to mention the recurring man at all.

That image was almost worse than the clamor of war echoing in between his ears. He began to have reservations that he would ever feel free to ride alone again without the presence of phantoms from the war. Unless he went with Cathy's slim arms entwined under his and around his waist. Her ear pressed between his shoulder blades with the curls of her auburn hair tickling his neck.

Perhaps then he would relax on a motorcycle once more.

Nevertheless, he doubted.

_*** sit down young stranger  
*** I do not understand_

"To be honest with you, Philip," Nichol spoke up after Walker had managed a page of casually strung together sentences conveying his immeasurable lack without Catherine near - a true sentiment devoid of its most recent catalyst. "I don't see how they expect us to adjust back to normal life after all of this."

"Normal?" Walker tipped back. The short leg lifted from the ground and he put the tip of his boot under it for more balance.

"Well, they can't give us all medals. And psychological therapy for all the survivors will not fit the postwar agenda the wire has been promoting," Nichol snorted. "Let's all return to normalcy they'll say and give out factory jobs. To those boys with both legs who can stand all day. Letting the others push papers or wave flags."

"You're always cynical." The younger man glanced at his letter, still uncertain about how to continue if he couldn't share that day's one peculiar experience that still troubled him. "Won't you go back to school?"

That made Nichol laugh. "I don't think there's anything left they could teach me after this. Books of history seem so trivial after living it."

"You could always start up a paper to undermine your stepbrother's," Walker added, with a touch of perverseness that Nichol appreciated immensely when Walker indulged it.

"Brilliant," Nichol chortled, nearly choking as he took in too much dust filtered air. He leaned up on his elbows then, causing his loosened uniform to pull taunt across his burly chest. His squared chin lowered, "Then I can steal away his fiancée with my dry wit and humors." Dark eyes flashed at the thought, the futility understood even as Nichol indulged the potential success. Nichol had not often spoken of his admiration for his step-brother's girlfriend, Ekaterina Une, and he still scarcely masked his anger whenever he shared an opinion on how Treize conducted his love affairs or treated his future bride.

For a few hours that night, they were granted sleep in the abandoned room with the marvelous chair. They drifted into the learned sleep of soldiers who sank into it so swiftly they left dreams behind; although, when they woke more limber, their souls were hardly refreshed.

_*** sit down young stranger  
*** I wait for your reply_

Their commander splintered the company. Half to go ahead and meet the main camp that was a day's journey forward along their country trail.

Walker, who along with Nichol was assigned to that division, collected the unit's combined letters for the post in his side satchel. His own a self-assessed unsatisfactory and hasty declaration of love and impatience ("_I expect to see you soon, my darling Cathy_") scrawled above his signature and below the abbreviated paragraphs. He had never found it so challenging to write her before. As if everything he'd seen before that day could be explained away by shaded phrases, but the haunting circumstances of that reoccurring figure were too mysterious to be captured in any crafted word.

"Lieutenant Walker."

Philip Walker looked up to see his commander coming forward with a slight, authoritative smile. Passing Walker another envelope for the pile, the ranking officer added, "Since this is an important letter hidden among the many, I'd like you to ride with Nichol today. We have need of the spare motorcycle since a score of new relief soldiers are meeting us here. Too many damn new pups to keep an eye on and the bike will make it easier."

"Yes, sir," Walker replied, long since numb to any changes. Once, before the call to arms, Cathy had accused him of being the most unwilling person to accept change, noticing and disapproving any variations to his clothes, her hair style or a new spice in an otherwise familiar meal. Instead, he had adjusted to find sanity through it all by clinging onto the hope for the future. Indispensable hope for the future generations. His and Cathy's children.

But with the replacement forces arriving. With the potential of returning home. With the present embracing that longed for future, Walker wasn't certain how to accept the elusive daydream he had so long treasured.

He held his goggles in one gloved hand while resting his other leather-covered palm against the satchel balanced across his thighs. The strap wrapped over his right shoulder.

Nichol drove their vehicle ahead of the others. The open jeep holding only the two of them, while the others harbored a dozen tarp-covered soldiers in the back, just behind the driver's carriage.

At high noon, the sun warmed them at its fullest having burned away all of the lingering clouds and haze. Walker resisted the heavy droop of his eyelids even as his body was roughly jostled from side to side as they followed the uneven path. The bland and hardly remembered lunch sat heavily as it settled in their stomachs. Glancing over past Nichol, Walker stared.

Standing a ways from the road was the mystifying individual from the day before.

"Nichol!" Walker sat up and spun sideways in the seat. "Do you see him?"

"Who?" Nichol's reaction was instantaneous, sharply glancing to the side in the direction that Walker was watching. Training and months of close quarters had Nichol programmed to respond immediately to a fellow soldier's warning. Walker he trusted more than most.

"In the field, the man in blue. Do you see him?" Then Walker rephrased the question. "Have you seen him before?"

By that point, Nichol had decelerated trying to turn and look behind him. The jeep still moved forward as not to completely stop the caravan behind them. "No, who?" Nichol sat back normally once more, putting both hands responsibly on the wheel as he sped up. "Was he armed?"

"No," Walker shied back, unsatisfied, but reluctant to say more, "No, it was just some guy."

_*** sit down young stranger  
*** they say you been out wandering_

Their first stop at the base left the contents of Walker's satchel in the appropriate hands. The weary company mingled with those soldiers stationed specifically in that region. Enjoying a few moments of freedom, Nichol and Walker excused themselves to venture into the city.

"American! American!" A group of about six school children chanted, calling from their game of marbles. Five boys, about elementary school age, made a half circle just off the street. The designated shooter in her grey-violet skirt looked up. Her largest marble still poised for the shot, she also squealed out at the men in uniform.

Walker waved at them from the opposite sidewalk. A small boy with enormous eyes returned a half wave with the fingers through the holes in his pant's pockets. Another stuck out his pink tongue, shockingly bright and clean in contrast to their filthy play clothes.

"_American, American,_" Nichol mimicked under his breath, unimpressed. "Maybe your family, Walker. But just because I'm in this uniform, it doesn't mean that I'm American."

"Say something to them then in Russian then." Walker tried not to grin, knowing that Nichol was proud of his ancestral heritage if not directly part of it. He himself loved children and it had been too long since he'd seen any playing together. "And just because your mother wasn't born in the States didn't exclude you from fighting for your country - you're certainly a citizen."

Nichol scowled, deciding any retort would be beneath him. However, as they continued to walk, he couldn't help but want to let loose a piece of his mind.

As they walked in silence, they passed a building with a front door and windows of glass full of more frilly pink lace than either man had seen in months. From the upstairs window, a woman called out at them using a sultry voice. Walker could imagine what she was saying from her repeated petitions and understood her occupation from her relatively indecent state of dress.

_"Hübscher Soldat!"_ She waved her ample and bare arm out to them. Walker narrowly caught himself before reflexively responding in kind. Not unlike the children he had waved to just moments before.

_"Gehen sie Frau weg!"_ The belted snarl from Nichol caught Walker off guard and he stumbled off the sidewalk onto the cobbled street for a moment - kicking up his boots to catch up with Nichol who'd started to walk much more quickly.

"What'd you say?" Walker's lips pulled back in an almost boyish grin of amazement, showing teeth and gum.

"I'm not quite sure," Nichol spoke, trying not to smile back and only failing. He gave Walker fleeting glances and continued to walk swiftly before admitting, "I think I told her to get lost. Maybe."

Snorting, Walker's smile widened, "Maybe?"

They kept putting one foot in front of the other, weaving a little bit as they held in their irregular relapses of mirth. Listening to the shouts of the woman calling after them. Taking what little refuge they could in each other since the world around them, while their dwelling place for so many months, was still undeniably foreign.

_*** sit down young stranger  
*** they say you traveled far_

The changes, initially subtle then more dramatic, were signs that the war was finally and truly going to end. New troops came in to provide relief and regular mail came with them more frequently. Nichol and Treize had progressed their quarrel of correspondence to over-analyzing the responsibility of nations to compensate for property and personal damages. Each letter from Nichol's step-brother printed on the same stationary.

Then they both received a new assignment: one to return home. Walker stared at his unopened envelope blankly for several minutes, even as Nichol read and reread his repeatedly and sometimes aloud as if to validate the print into sounds. The news was hardly unexpected, but almost too satisfying.

"Back to Pennsylvania for you, my boy," Nichol said with more amiability in his mocking tone than Walker had heard since they'd met. "Now your service is over, you can marry sweet Catherine and make many little Philip Walker babies and start that farm you're always talking about."

"My family is miners." Walker corrected but was only half-listening, still dumbfounded by the thought of going home. Seeing Catherine again. Marrying Catherine. His thumb rubbed the upper corner teasing the unopened seal. They'd just finished eating breakfast with their Captain and a few other first lieutenants when the captain had presented the letters with smug satisfaction to Walker, Nichol, and the rest.

"Miners, whatever," Nichol shrugged. "_Dear sir . . . end of duty . . . options of military careers, reassignment, or honorable discharge from duties . . . this next Tuesday._ Damn it all. I'll be home in time for the bloody wedding."

"Well, even if your brother is her husband-to-be, you'll get to see your lady at her best," Walker consoled, almost physically feeling the obligatory flash of Nichol's malicious glare. "Although, now that you mention it. I cannot wait to see Catherine dressed to be my wife." Walker tore just a little of the envelope's corner. "You must come, Nichol. I cannot imagine anyone else to be my best man."

Nichol paused from reading the letter again, as he was pacing along the length of the abandoned table. His face losing lines of fatigue even as his eyes continued to skim the page. "Of course, Philip, of course."

They shared an indescribable look, or perhaps the look of fellow prisoners having been told, after spending years alone together, that the jail doors had been left open and the guards had gone away.

_*** sit down young stranger  
*** will you gather daydreams_

The habit of writing letters was hard to break.

Catherine pulled on her robe as she slipped from her bed. The bed she had shared with her husband for thirty-five years. The hard wood floor was unexpectedly cool against her bare feet and toes. They'd just torn up the carpeting in the master bedroom - a project she and Philip had planned on doing since they'd moved into their home, their first home, their home together.

Most mornings, she would wake up and find his side of the bed already cool. Even as she rose before the sun to make breakfast and get the children ready for the school days, her husband would be in the fields. Preparing the soil for the crop, watching it grow, tending it for harvest.

After the war, Philip had been rather solitary, not seeking out much companionship besides his family. Never speaking much of his wartime experiences except to answer direct questions with vague recollections, which was quite different from a number of the other veterans in the neighboring cities who wore their medallions with puffed up pride.

She loved him for his humble sincerity.

He no longer needed to work the fields by himself. Their son managed the bulk of the work. He and his wife living hardly a mile down the country lane. During the dark of night, Catherine could see the streetlight of their home reflecting in the distance. The Walker family, her husband and children, gave her much pride.

Crossing the blue-grey hall toward the brighter light in the kitchen, she leaned in the doorway and watched her husband's back as he sat in his chair by the table. Fully dressed, Philip Walker was slowly writing a correspondence by the light coming in from the just rising sun. She noticed fondly that he had his foot under the front right leg of the chair. A peculiar routine he'd kept ever since he returned from the war.

She rubbed the back of her neck, under the auburn curls that were liberally thinned by the silver-grey honoring her age. "Can I get you some coffee?" Her voice warm in the still cool of morning, she walked up next to him. She put one arm across his shoulders, the other slipped into the deep pockets of her light blue robe, her favorite for many years. She kissed the top of his head, then ruffled his brown hair also dusted by time.

"Yes." Walker continued to push the pen across the paper to fill it with more words.

"Writing to Nichol, again?" She turned to rinse out the old pot from the day before, the water coming with a distinct smell that they were both long used to.

Walker sat back and admired his wife for a moment with a faint smile. "He's arguing that the current generation is living under a false peace and disrespect for authority."

"Is he still volunteering at the University?" Catherine asked, recalling images of her husband's friend to mind. The dark young man that stood at their wedding, his continuing promotion during a successful military career, retiring from service to occasionally engage in debates and conferences at the local colleges.

Nichol had never married, which had intrigued Catherine. Under his disagreeable exterior, she had found the sincere and strikingly loyal individual who had shared that with her husband. In her more imaginative moments, she thought that he must have been the ill-fated lover who had lost his one and only beloved, like in one of her worn and re-read romance novels.

"He apparently crossed paths with your brother recently and they had a splendid conversation in which Trowa was _simple-minded, shallow, ignorant, vague, and disagreeable_." Walker quoted lightly, shaking his head in disbelief. "Sounds just like Trowa, doesn't it?"

"Sounds just like Nichol," Catherine teased, remembering the how her typically acquiescent and pleasant younger brother had met Nichol only to irritate each other right from the beginning. The aroma of the coffee began to stretch across the room. At first, lightly appealing, then becoming quite desirable as it filled every space.

They heard the screen door slam closed and the familiar call of their daughter-in-law as she loudly walked through the front hall. "It's me. Junior's in the orchard, Dad, and wants to know where you put the new baskets. I'm going to get some gloves from the back room and help."

"The apples are ready?" Catherine tilted her head to one side, watching as her husband crossed to stare out the window above the sink. A splendid view of not only the orchard but the fields full of their latest crop. Walker had always wanted to work with the land, and the land responded unquestionably to his touch as he shaped the future crops to health and plenty.

It was a gift their son had as well.

She brought his coffee to him, observing his silence with curiosity. After so many years together, he still delighted her; however, in certain moments, Philip was reliving certain thoughts that he had never shared with her.

He pulled her close. "I love you, Catherine," he said a bit huskily, and they both watched over their boy as he pulled down the first apple for the year and shined it against his blue overalls. The first full rays of the sunrise illuminating him.

As if sensing the loving gaze of his parents, the younger Walker turned to them and pulled off his straw hat to see them better. Smiling fondly, he waved.

_*** sit down young stranger  
*** there's nothing left to say._


End file.
